Monday, May 31, 2010

This "great belief in technology" is not secular but closely linked with a great belief in American awesomeness. And American awesomeness has always been sustained by the foundations of American Christianity, a form of religion that is humble not toward nature but toward a God who has power over everything and punishes His enemies and rewards His followers. With American Christianity, prosperity is a God-given right, and this frame of thinking has established and reinforced a relationship with nature that is essentially identical with the one that exists between a master and slave.

It is precisely this kind of thinking that in Europe began to crumble in the period that followed the scientific revolution.